Conventional fabrics are known which exhibit a fantastic, clear and bright color effect called "iridescence", and such fabrics are produced by the different methods described below ("New fiber discoveries --Revised 3rd edition", by Kazushi Yoshikawa, published Mar. 15, 1994 by Kamakura Shobo).
(1) The warp and weft separately dyed with single colors are plane woven or twill woven to produce a juxtaposed color mixture.
(2) A thin-film of a light reflecting layer and a transparent layer is formed on the fabric surface by sputtering.
(3) A textile is made from foil yarn prepared by combining a polarizing film with a molecular oriented anisotropic film.
However, method (1) above has a drawback in that it cannot be applied for knits whose warp and weft are not clearly distinguishable, and therefore products obtained thereby have limited uses. Methods (2) and (3) have disadvantages in that they require special apparatuses for production of fabrics and thus are very troublesome and costly, while they can only give fabrics with a hard hand.